Patricia Crone (born 1945)[1] is a scholar, author, Orientalist, and historian of early Islamic history working since 1997 at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. She is notable as an historian of Islam, who has treated the Koran as scripture with a history, just as there are histories of the Bible.[2]

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In 1977, Crone became a University Lecturer in Islamic history and a Fellow of Jesus College at Oxford University. Crone became Assistant University Lecturer in Islamic studies and Fellow of Gonville and Caius College at Cambridge University in 1990. She has held several positions at Cambridge since then.[3] She served as University Lecturer in Islamic studies from 1992 to 1994, and Reader in Islamic history from 1994 until 1997.

In their book Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World (1977), Crone and her associate Michael Cook, working at SOAS at the time, provided a new analysis of early Islamic history by studying the only surviving contemporary accounts of the rise of Islam, which were written in Armenian, Greek, Aramaic and Syriac by witnesses. By using non-Arabic sources, they could study more of the context for the rise of Islam. They argued that Islam, as represented by contemporary, non-Muslim sources, was in essence a tribal rebellion against incursions by the Byzantine and Persian empires. They noted that it had deep roots in Judaism, and that Arabs and Jews were allies in these conquering communities.[5]

In her book Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (1987), Crone argues that the importance of the pre-Islamic Meccan trade has been grossly exaggerated. She also suggests that while Muhammad never traveled much beyond the Hijaz, internal evidence in the Qur'an, such as its description of Muhammad's polytheist opponents as "olive growers," might indicate that the events surrounding the Prophet took place near the Mediterranean region.[5]

Beginning as a scholar of early military and economic history of the Middle East, Crone now works mainly on "the Qur’an and the cultural and religious traditions of Iraq, Iran, and the formerly Iranian part of Central Asia."[6]